Put on the humble inquirer

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Ben Franklin was a debater with another bookish lad in town John Collins. They disputed and were very fond of argument and desirous of confuting one another; He describes how disputations can become a very bad habit making people extremely disagreeable in company by bringing contradiction into conversation. It produces disgusts and perhaps enmities even with friends. On disputing he adds "persons of good sense …seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh."

Maybe since my ancestors were from Edinburgh I have inherited the tendency to fall into disputing. I learned quickly on my mission that it was never effective but, the other areas of my life seem troubled by it. The advice from Ben Franklin is to put on the humble inquirer where he became expert at "drawing people even of superior knowledge into concessions the consequence of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved."

He continued this for a few years but left it gradually retaining only a habit of modest diffidence, never using words like certainly or undoubtedly that gave positiveness to an opinion that may be possibly disputed. Instead he would say I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so. It appears to me or I should not think it, so or so for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so, or it is so, if I am not mistaken.

He puts it more clearly when he says "If you desire instruction and improvement from others, you should not at the same time express yourself fixed in your present opinions."

I have thought a lot about this concept and realize that I must do a complete turnaround in the way I interact and speak with others. I remember a time in college when I had a roommate's boyfriend got so mad at me when we were discussing a difference of opinion. I could not, until now, understand why. Last night I was contemplating this when my husband was talking to me on a walk and I realized that if I am so fixed in my opinion and positive of it, it must feel like talking to a wall when you talk to me. If you are so fixed in your opinions' how can you be open to truth taught by the spirit if you are so sure you are right and already know something about somebody and you just have to convince them of it when you talk to them. No wonder he says that this "positive assuming manner" "seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat most of those purposes for which speech was given to us."

Besides how can we be so positive in our opinions when we know that we are carnal, sensual, devilish and imperfectly mortal?(Mosiah 3:19) Our understanding is young and always changing just like our lives changes one line at a time, one new thought at a time. We grow from grace to grace with changes ever so slowly that to have a "positive assuming manner" in our interactions with other seems only proud and haughty and a blind manner of living.

"Men must be taught as if you taught them not. And things unknown proposed as things forgot."